TV Ad Running In Wisconsin Attacks Obama For Allegedly Letting Babies Die
An independent group is running a TV spot in Wisconsin that attacks Obama by suggesting he allowed babies to die by opposing a measure in Illinois that purportedly would have protected the lives of babies who survive abortions.
The ad ran in the Wisconsin market this morning on the local NBC affiliate, a reader reports to us, and an employee at the affiliate, NBC 15, confirms that the spot will be running for a week.
The ad uses the same false attack line as does the big radio ad campaign being planned by the powerful National Right to Life Committee that we reported on here yesterday.
The new TV spot, the NBC 15 employee confirms, is being funded by a group called the Committee for Truth in Politics, which registered as a PAC in 2004 and seems to have involved itself in some local Nevada races.
At any rate, the next five weeks will be more and more dominated by this kind of stuff, and painting Obama as indifferent to the lives of babies appears to be a choice tactic for these groups.
We're trying to get more on this, including where else it's running, the script, and possibly the ad itself, and will let you know when we know more.
Is that the best they've got? They might as well fold up their tent and go home.
Save your money for 2010, RNC and affiliated 527s. Your just sending good money after bad at this point.
October 3, 2008 11:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
Whoops, I meant "you're just...", not "your just."
October 3, 2008 11:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Huh? There are babies in Illinois that support abortions?
October 3, 2008 11:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Damned liberal babies!
October 3, 2008 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
And they want to take your guns away, too!
October 3, 2008 11:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
...and have gay marriages!
October 3, 2008 11:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Colbert says Liberals and Obama want to replace "God" with "gay baby."
Gay babies who support abortions? These truly are the End Times!
October 3, 2008 12:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
This line of attack seems over the top.
And too late.
October 3, 2008 11:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hard for me to say, even as a resident of the great state of WI. As I've mentioned, I reside in a very conservative area and there are a multitude of McCain signs where I live.
But this only solidifies his base. It will do nothing on independents.
Just my humble, pinko liberal commie opinion, tho.
October 3, 2008 11:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Where abouts?
October 3, 2008 11:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Icky. This maybe works in a paralled universe, where we aren't in 2 wars and facing a terrible economic crisis.
I am convinced this surge in the polls for Obama is about Americans getting serious, and wanting the same from their leaders. This crap isn't serious. It's wedge politics, and their slice of the pie looks ever smaller.
October 3, 2008 11:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
I thought NBC refused to allow ads to run on McCain's health?
October 3, 2008 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
Baby killer?
I think I've heard it all...
October 3, 2008 11:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
Off topic but I'm really surprised I haven't seen any articles about Palin's "expand the powers of the VP" comment. Maybe I've missed them?
October 3, 2008 11:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
Are you talking about in the MSM?
I'm assuming that's because an article about that point would make them face the fact that 85+% of what she said was pure fluff....they would rather talk about how cutesy and adorable she was.
October 3, 2008 11:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Plus Joe knocked it down...it's spelled out right there in Article I...Executive Branch (sorry, couldn't resist).
October 3, 2008 1:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
So its not okay to talk about the health of a 72 year old who survived years of torture and a series of aggressive melanomas, but spreading vicious, arguably slanderous lies about Obama gets the thumbs up?
October 3, 2008 11:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Who cares? Charles fucking Krauthammer has called it for us.
I know personally I'm going to quit worrying.
Yee Haw, peeps - we have done it - we have elected Barack Obama!
October 3, 2008 11:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
I am loathe to grow complacent, but I think you are right. We cannot just quit, of course, but I think we have crossed the point of no return. There is nothing left that McCain can do to turn the tide. As long as we do not screw-up, we have as much as won.
October 3, 2008 11:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
My dearest Missouri - I know, but there comes a point where it's not cockiness, not complacency but just the overwhelming fact - we have won this.
I'm not going to sit around and gloat under after the election - but my tension is allllll gone.
October 3, 2008 11:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Exactly. It is nice to be past the point where we are all biting our nails and playing arm-chair quarterback to a man who is obviously much better at this than any of us. I am really going to enjoy canvassing tomorrow, confident in the knowledge that we are going to win this thing.
October 3, 2008 11:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Complacency, shcomplacency. Barring a "dead woman or a live boy" level of scandal or a national emergency that causes President Cheney to declare martial law, cancel the elections and activate that contract with Halliburton for the construction of mass detention camps in the Utah desert All that remains is the work of turning it into a really humiliating crushing defeat for them.
Sarah is in Texas, today, btw Tena. Texas. They actually feel the need to send their their girl down to Texas for a little basejobbing 31 days out from the election. Wow.
October 3, 2008 12:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Are you kidding? O my god - holy shit, Texas must be more volatile than anyone is letting on.
O jesus - god I wish -
October 3, 2008 12:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wonder if this "Obama kills babies" is spreading through fundamentalist churches or something--yesterday a friend told me a six-year boy in her child's class (small-town Oregon) said he was not for Obama "because he kills babies."
October 3, 2008 11:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
O NOes! He's lost the 6 year old anti-abortion vote!
October 3, 2008 11:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
On the Sunday before the 2004 election, I was strolling in front of a basilica, getting a feel for the neighborhood where I was assigned to be a poll watcher.
A lady descending the steps of the basilica, who had just come from Mass, noticing my Kerry sticker on my slicker (it was drizzling), started shouting at me and practically poking her finger into my chest: "He wants to kill babies!" She had just come from Mass. She stepped into a waiting Cadillac.
It was a moment I will never forget! And my thought at time was: "Oh my God. I'm not even welcome in my own church anymore!" (That was not my parish... but .... truly, I felt "disowned" by my own kind.)
It was bizarre to see that this woman had just come from church. And felt compelled to shout at me, a perfect stranger, a lady with white hair! Minding my own business. Just walking along. And considering going into the basilica for a moment of prayer.
What a disastrous Sunday!
I walked down the street till I came to a Hispanic bakery. They did not disown me, when I walked in. I needed a "fix" of pastries to somehow cope with being kicked out of a church, so to speak.
This business about "killing babies." It's the last ditch in their slimy campaign. They're mired in it:
http://picasaweb.google.com/warpstation/MccainHeadache#5251640084526955554
October 3, 2008 12:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
The wingnutz play the "baby killer" card.
That means victory is in the air!
October 3, 2008 11:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
I can smell it , feel it and taste it this morning. There is such momentum now there's no way - McLame cannot take the reigns of this election - no way in hell.
October 3, 2008 11:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Precisely. If that is the best they have, they might as well just close up shop now. At this point, they are just wasting resources that they should be saving for 2010.
October 3, 2008 11:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Not only does he support killing babies, he and Michelle personally kill them themselves and drink their blood. Only white Christian babies, of course.
(Coming to an email in your crazy Republican relatives' inbox next week.)
October 3, 2008 11:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Camp Obama needs to come up with a powerful counter-ad on this one.
October 3, 2008 11:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
I really don't think they do.
October 3, 2008 11:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
I am with HyperRevue here. Perhaps if the McCain campaign had pushed this angle earlier on, before Obama was as well defined in the voters' minds as he is now, the Obama camp would need to push back against this. By this point, however, I think that the ad in question is going to miss the mark. Obama is already established as a good family man with a fine wife and two smart and adorable daughters. The "baby-killer" meme is not going to stick in the minds of any but those who were already for McCain.
October 3, 2008 12:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Me too. Just let it go.
October 3, 2008 12:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good grief! The medical professionals who were present don't count? I'm sure this is going to go over very well with the local doctors and nurses who apparently just stood there and ignored their own oaths to save lives. Really, do these folk even have a clue?
October 3, 2008 11:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
OT: Great line from Nate Silver
" Palin on Biden's teacher wife: "God bless her, her reward is in heaven, right?" That is the sound of every teacher in America voting for Barack Obama. Wow. What a mistake."
October 3, 2008 11:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
That was so fucking nasty - Joe hesitated for a half second - he was thinking about hitting her - and he didn't and good for him.
Biden was fucking superb! He was almost flawless once he got going. It was beautiful.
October 3, 2008 12:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Indeed, for all the talk of how Palin exceeded expectations (honestly, how could she not?), I think that Biden was the one who really gave a much better performance than was expected. He was concise, focussed and always quick to give any credit to Obama (not himself) and any blame to McCain (not Palin, his ostensible opponent). I was very impressed.
October 3, 2008 12:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yup. I had the cringe too. Used to teach kids. Honestly, it demonstrates her contempt for teachers. And likely her contempt for learning.
October 3, 2008 12:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'd love to say to Sarah Palin this morning something my mom used to say to me when she'd had all she could take:
You're not so fucking special afterall, are you, missy?
(my mom never said fuck, however - everything but.)
October 3, 2008 12:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
The one thing that I was pleased with out of last night: all the wingnutz falling in line behind Palin (Buchanan, Noonan, etc.).
For a while there, I thought they were actually becoming lucid and intellectually honest.
October 3, 2008 12:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
I imagine that after Noonan got caught on a live-mic saying what she really thought about Palin, she figured that she had to be extra slavish in her praise last night lest she lose her posh gig at the WSJ.
October 3, 2008 12:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yep. Nooners is pathetic.
October 3, 2008 12:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm guessing that John McCain has probably killed more babies in his life than Barack Obama. The A-4 Skyhawk he flew in Vietnam was not a "fighter" jet, by the way. It was an attack jet, that dropped bombs.
Oh wait, those were Vietnamese babies. They don't count. Nevermind.
October 3, 2008 12:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
These are debunked and recycled attacks from Alan Keyes in the 2004 race. The only thing Obama did wrong was get confused in an explanation of why he voted down one particular 2003 version of BAIPA after more than 7 different versions of the bill were introduced in the Illinois General Assembly. He, and the rest of the Dems on his HHS committee, voted down that 2003 version because of generally accepted concerns that it could negatively affect a woman's right to choose in Illinois.
Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor has said that Obama would have voted for the 2005 Illinois bill if he had been a state legislator when it was considered because it addressed the concerns present in the 2003 version, much as he says he would have supported the federal bill, which wouldn't have impacted non-existent federal law.
These are tired and desperate attacks.
October 3, 2008 12:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
These ads have been totally debunked and have been recycled ever since Alan Keyes ran against Obama in 2004. They are also being circulated in emails under the radar and in aggressive you tube videos. It's important to not dismiss them in battle ground states where the margins will be smaller, and to combat the arguments with the facts.
October 3, 2008 12:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Icky. This maybe works in a paralled universe, where we aren't in 2 wars and facing a terrible economic crisis.
Yeah, that's what I kept thinking last night. All of Palin's material was just recycled verbatim from Bush '03-'04 speeches. Shit is old -- even for the base. But like doped-up lab rats they just keep hitting that same lever, hoping that somehow it'll excite the pleasure centers of low-info voters' brains one more time. Na ga happen.
October 3, 2008 1:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
maybe that's all their base can stomach. Old recycled repub cliches.
October 3, 2008 7:38 PM | Reply | Permalink